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According to the 2011 Canadian Census, 31.5% of women 65 and older live alone compared to 16% of older men.
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David Anstey is one of the 16%. One of six million.
He is 82 years old.
His wife left a long time ago. Of his friends in Petawawa, where he moved from Toronto in his forties to escape “crime and insanity,” only one is still alive. All his brothers have died.
Her only family contact is a son in British Columbia.
He couldn’t feel lonely anymore.
You feel inconsequential, abandoned, and believe that many older people are in the same boat, which is a story that has yet to be written from a personal point of view.
An important story.
His GP left the province in the spring of 2021. He has to use Doctor on Demand to renew his medications.
Social services keep telling you they’ll get you a new doctor, but Petawawa, high up in the Ottawa Valley, isn’t exactly a place that has medical graduates to hang up its bachelors.
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You live in a small rental apartment that is affordable only because it is frugal. His car is a whisk, but he takes it to the grocery store and drug store, but will soon be cashing in on his chips.
He also knows that when he dies no one will know until the smell of death seeps into the hallways of the small apartment building he calls home.
“That’s the scary part for older people like me,” he says. “Have I thought about finishing it? Yes, but having the means to do it easily is not available and I have no weapons and I am also a coward ”.
You don’t know any of the other tenants. They are young; disinterested.
“I’m just the old man who lives alone in the apartment upstairs,” he writes.
In his correspondence he asks me: “What would you do if you were me? How would you feel?”
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The subject line in his email read: “Seniors left alone to die in Petawawa.”
David Anstey still publishes a small circulation online newspaper called The Penny Pincher, but probably not for much longer.
It’s running out of steam.
“My fears grow daily because my prospects for the future are terrifying,” he writes.
Single people in the 80+ age group have some unique needs. First, these people are more likely to report difficulties with mobility (walking or climbing stairs), self-care (bathing, dressing, and moving around the house), and living independently (running errands such as shopping) than people the same age. living as a couple.
David Anstey has his share of medical ailments, namely heart and lung diseases, the diseases controlled by drugs.
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Plus, it has all the crunches that come with being 82 years old.
But living alone calls it a “horror”.
Petawawa, of course, is a military city. CFB Petawawa is probably the reason why the city of Petawawa still exists.
The story David Anstey wanted published is partially written in this column. There was something about him that piqued my interest, but who wouldn’t read an article titled “Seniors Left Alone to Die in Petawawa?”
He expresses his situation quite dramatically.
He is not consoled by the fact that 16% of men over the age of 65 live alone.
When he was 65, he was active and still had friends who hadn’t died.
But each year that progressed it added its own district burden.
Now 82, David Anstey would rather fall asleep in a public place so that his body wouldn’t stink in the hallways.
There are a few other ways to express it.
Reference-torontosun.com